Art at the DMZ. ‘A Collective Prayer’
I’m participating in an exhibition in the Odusan Unification Observatory. Every time I drive to my studio, I pass this building, which is perched on the top of a hill overlooking the DMZ, with a clear view of North Korea across the Han Estuary. But I’ve never bothered to drive up there, so when I was invited to participate in the exhibition the ‘73 Project: A Collective Prayer, Divided Time, Connected Future, which was to be held there, I decided to visit.
‘Ancient Apocalypse’ Now.
Some thoughts on watching the Netflix docuseries ‘Ancient Apocalypse’, including a somewhat controversial reference to North Korea.
‘Flood the Zone with Shit and Howling’. Lessons from North Korea
Sometimes, I’m grateful to North Korea for helping me to see more clearly what’s happening in the world more generally. In this case, their ‘noise-bombing’ and balloon sending has helped me understand President Trump.
Blue jeans are still subversive (if you live in North Korea)!
More zany news from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea: Blue jeans are still subversive! Recent evidence of this is the censoring of a British television series about gardening that’s been pirated by the North Koreans to show on state television.
Is Kim Jong Un Preparing for War?
I borrow today’s post title from a scary recent article (January 11th) by North Korea experts Robert L. Carlin and Siegfried S. Hecker on the respected website 38 North. In the first paragraph the authors write:: ‘The situation on the Korean Peninsula is more dangerous than it has been at any time since early June 1950. That may sound overly dramatic, but we believe that, like his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war. We do not know when or how Kim plans to pull the trigger, but the danger is already far beyond the routine warnings in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo about Pyongyang’s “provocations.” In other words, we do not see the war preparation themes in North Korean media appearing since the beginning of last year as typical bluster from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.’
The end of the year (or one of them)
Some thoughts on the end of the (or a) year in South Korea, and the bizarre calendar adopted by my neighbors north of the DMZ.
Boundaries, terrestrial and extra-terrestrial
Recently, North Korea boasted that it had successfully launched a spy satellite into orbit. In this post I reflect on very different kinds of boundary.
A view of the North
I recently visited Ganghwado Jejeokbong Peace Observatory, which is in the northern area of the Civilian Restricted Zone that abuts the DMZ. From the observatory, you can see the Democratic People’s Republic just 2 km way across the estuary.
‘A Nation of Racist Dwarfs’
The title of today’s post is lifted from Christopher Hitchens’ essay from 2010 which I mentioned in my previous blog. Catchy isn’t it? And not a little racist, which is rather rich in that The Hitch makes a special point of describing North Korean as racist and xenophobic. He writes with authority that “a North Korean is on average six inches shorter than a South Korean”. But it’s not true! well, he was exaggerating. Find out how much.
‘North Korea: ‘a phenomenon of the very extreme and pathological right.’
The title of the post is a quotation from the British writer Christopher Hitchens, who wrote about the North Korean system in an article written in 2010. Hitchens began by recounting a visit to North Korea and how his minder had expressed racist views in such a way that it was obvious that such views were central to what, for him, was a quite normal and acceptable worldview. I think about how to understand this dreadful ideology within a wider context.
Freeing the Mind, North Korea style
Some thoughts on what neuroscience’s insights into how the brain simulates a reality can tell us about North Korean-style thought control.
Police State?
While I was in London I visited Tate Britain and saw an exhibition of recent fresco paintings by Rose Hastings and Hannah Quinlan. The works were pretty good, but were justified by the duo of artists as about living in Britain’s ‘police state’. Really?
The map and the territory
These days, as I take my morning walk with the dog and traverse hills criss-crossed by trench lines and defended with bunkers and gun emplacements, my thoughts inevitably go to similar but much more deadly defenses that now exist in eastern Ukraine.
North Korea’s Victory over Covid-19
So, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea did not collapse due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Why?
Juche Realism and False Optimism
Second Part of my analysis of North Korea Art : false optimism
